In the sport of paintball, firearms specially designed for paintball (referred to as “markers”) are loaded with spherical gelatin capsules containing water-soluble “paint”. These paintballs are most often loaded into a paintball marker through a hopper that is mounted to the paintball marker and is able to feed paintballs into the marker chamber. Hoppers are often capable of feeding paintballs very quickly in order to accommodate the very high rates of fire that many paintball markers are capable of. However, a common alternative to competitive speedball and more casual recreational play is “mag fed” gameplay. Participants in mag fed gameplay utilize paintball markers that greatly resemble conventional firearms and take part in scenarios that are more realistic and tactical than other types of paintball gameplay. The paintball markers utilized in mag fed paintball play are often designed to resemble conventional firearms as closely as possible and as such, paintballs are generally loaded into the markers via magazines in lieu of hoppers. In addition to the more realistic and tactical nature of mag fed gameplay, the limited ammunition capacity of the magazines presents an additional challenge and layer of realism to mag fed gameplay. Magazines designed for paintballs often resemble conventional magazines and may include variants such as the STANAG box magazine and various types of drum magazines. Drum magazines are often favored due to their comparatively higher ammunition capacity relative to box magazines, lowering the frequency of reloads.
The present invention is a drum magazine for loading paintballs and shaped projectiles into a magazine-fed firearm. The present invention stores paintballs in a spiral arrangement and is able to feed the paintballs into a magazine-fed paintball marker. The present invention includes an adjustable internal feeding mechanism that allows the present invention to be utilized with a wide variety of paintballs ranging from very soft paintballs to very brittle paintballs by adjusting the pressure that is exerted on the paintballs within the present invention. The present invention is additionally locked when the present invention is not loaded into a firearm, preventing paintballs from feeding while the magazine is not loaded into the firearm.